The question I am asked by almost everyone who sees our chocolates for the first time is " how do you get them to be so shiny/colorful?".  I provide the quick answer that I use a very thin layer of cocoa butter color before casting the mold, but I thought it would be useful to illustrate with this entry how the Pistachio Raspberry Big Hearts, shown above right, came to be.

The first frame shows the mold with the three cocoa butter colors just sprayed.  If you were to hold the mold to the light, it would be semi-transparent, because the three layers are super thin and meant as a gossamer sheen.

In the second frame, I have added our Orinoco 41% milk chocolate to the mold to create a thin coat.  Then I placed a generous dollop of raspberry pate de fruit: the fruit, sugar and pectin are just cooked minutes together so the pate has a soft consistency and tons of fresh flavor.  To that I add little pieces of candied organic Meyer lemon, see my earlier entry for the candying process.

In the third frame, I have just added the pistachio ganache, made with pistachio paste, organic cream and butter, sugar and white chocolate.  Once the ganache has crystallized, I will back off the mold with more milk chocolate to seal it.

And last, ta-dah!  The unmolded Big Heart, ready to be a feast for the eyes and a great dessert.  After all, we do eat with our eyes first...